Horizons.
It has been a very long time since my last post. I was, in fact, almost determined to take a step back, let it rest, post the occasional meme every now and then, but mostly just give it up.
Except I'm tired. I'm the kind of tired that tears you up inside when you try to suppress it, the kind of sad that crushes my mind inward to make space for itself at the edges of my consciousness.
It's not very bad yet. It might not even get very bad, this time. I'm not due another big one until 2015, so this is jumping the gun quite a bit. Of course, one could always argue that this was leftover detritus from 2011, but considering everything that's gone on in the past two months, while I'll admit to the inclination for melancholy and that the events of 2011 will probably always cause me soul-destroying grief when I think about them, I have been dealt a hand lately that would be hard on just about anyone. There have been ups, and what ups they have been, but it's a daily, maddening slog at the moment and I have to work for every happiness.
The odd thing about being depressed is that you end up with distorted notions of what constitutes "difficulty". In May 2011 I couldn't get out of bed because it was too difficult. Today, I feel like life is immensely difficult in many ways, but I'm getting out of bed on schedule, going to work and generally coping with life.
That's probably because honestly, my life is really fucking difficult at the moment. It feels kind of odd to say that - when you're depressed, you're so often admitting to hardships coping with everyday, ordinary things that most people can usually cope with no problem, like getting dressed or (my mortal enemy) brushing my teeth. People who have never come face to face with these shadows in their own lives have trouble empathizing with this sometimes, not because they're not trying to understand, but because, when they evaluate based on their own life, on the difficulty scale, these things all fall into "doable on automatic". They don't understand how something they just do can stop someone like me cold in their tracks, failing to notice all the little steps involved that cause a person in the throes of a mental illness paralysis by anxiety.
And so this is what you get used to; people not being able to understand how your problems register as such, while their usual issues that get them down are so out of scale for someone depressive as to be rendered almost completely meaningless.
Which, in and of itself is hard to deal with, but gets kind of fucked when you actually get better from your depression and start dealing with NonCrazy issues again, and you run into stuff that most people would actually consider difficult, but your scale is still set so that a load of laundry is likely to register as "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" even though that hasn't happened in months, and stuff anywhere from "cooking a balanced meal for dinner" to "getting the primary legal custody of a child more or less unexpectedly, with little prep time" just returns an "Error: value outside parameters, consider revising" reading.
And you sort of maybe think "oh, maybe I should get that fixed," in that abstract way, except you never do, and then shit happens and you're all "this doesn't register on my scale of problems", blithely not realizing that this? THIS IS THE NORMAL PEOPLE SCALE. You are legitimately allowed to have issues and absolutely nobody will be surprised. Like, surprise: INSTANT NINE YEAR OLD would throw just about anybody off their game.
Not to mention that I've also bought an apartment, done renovations on said apartment, changed jobs at my workplace, bought a car, moved, gotten a cat and tried to settle husband and cub down into a routine all since the beginning of July, not to mention the extra laundry, the sudden descent into step-mom-hood, the abrupt need for a very clear routine and habits (I suck at this) and I can't just skip making dinner because I feel like it anymore... well. Am I wrong in thinking that most people would be overwhelmed, if only a little?
And then my parents, because, you know, I didn't have enough on my plate already, decide that this is the optimal time to go freakyweird.
Unfortunately for them, I just don't have the time or energy to spend on anyone who's being actively unhelpful, so they're getting backburnered. I have to keep reminding myself that they're freakyweird and that how they see my life is actually not even close to accurate or how I see it, and that they're not helpful these days, so to expect that. At this point, I can't take on the responsibility for explaining things to them, and while I wish I could help them, they still need to admit that they need help understanding what's going on in my life. I don't see that genuinely happening any time soon.
I just need to get on with my life, and ignore all judgement but my own.
It would help, though, if someone got me a bigger plate.
Except I'm tired. I'm the kind of tired that tears you up inside when you try to suppress it, the kind of sad that crushes my mind inward to make space for itself at the edges of my consciousness.
It's not very bad yet. It might not even get very bad, this time. I'm not due another big one until 2015, so this is jumping the gun quite a bit. Of course, one could always argue that this was leftover detritus from 2011, but considering everything that's gone on in the past two months, while I'll admit to the inclination for melancholy and that the events of 2011 will probably always cause me soul-destroying grief when I think about them, I have been dealt a hand lately that would be hard on just about anyone. There have been ups, and what ups they have been, but it's a daily, maddening slog at the moment and I have to work for every happiness.
The odd thing about being depressed is that you end up with distorted notions of what constitutes "difficulty". In May 2011 I couldn't get out of bed because it was too difficult. Today, I feel like life is immensely difficult in many ways, but I'm getting out of bed on schedule, going to work and generally coping with life.
That's probably because honestly, my life is really fucking difficult at the moment. It feels kind of odd to say that - when you're depressed, you're so often admitting to hardships coping with everyday, ordinary things that most people can usually cope with no problem, like getting dressed or (my mortal enemy) brushing my teeth. People who have never come face to face with these shadows in their own lives have trouble empathizing with this sometimes, not because they're not trying to understand, but because, when they evaluate based on their own life, on the difficulty scale, these things all fall into "doable on automatic". They don't understand how something they just do can stop someone like me cold in their tracks, failing to notice all the little steps involved that cause a person in the throes of a mental illness paralysis by anxiety.
And so this is what you get used to; people not being able to understand how your problems register as such, while their usual issues that get them down are so out of scale for someone depressive as to be rendered almost completely meaningless.
Which, in and of itself is hard to deal with, but gets kind of fucked when you actually get better from your depression and start dealing with NonCrazy issues again, and you run into stuff that most people would actually consider difficult, but your scale is still set so that a load of laundry is likely to register as "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" even though that hasn't happened in months, and stuff anywhere from "cooking a balanced meal for dinner" to "getting the primary legal custody of a child more or less unexpectedly, with little prep time" just returns an "Error: value outside parameters, consider revising" reading.
And you sort of maybe think "oh, maybe I should get that fixed," in that abstract way, except you never do, and then shit happens and you're all "this doesn't register on my scale of problems", blithely not realizing that this? THIS IS THE NORMAL PEOPLE SCALE. You are legitimately allowed to have issues and absolutely nobody will be surprised. Like, surprise: INSTANT NINE YEAR OLD would throw just about anybody off their game.
Not to mention that I've also bought an apartment, done renovations on said apartment, changed jobs at my workplace, bought a car, moved, gotten a cat and tried to settle husband and cub down into a routine all since the beginning of July, not to mention the extra laundry, the sudden descent into step-mom-hood, the abrupt need for a very clear routine and habits (I suck at this) and I can't just skip making dinner because I feel like it anymore... well. Am I wrong in thinking that most people would be overwhelmed, if only a little?
And then my parents, because, you know, I didn't have enough on my plate already, decide that this is the optimal time to go freakyweird.
Unfortunately for them, I just don't have the time or energy to spend on anyone who's being actively unhelpful, so they're getting backburnered. I have to keep reminding myself that they're freakyweird and that how they see my life is actually not even close to accurate or how I see it, and that they're not helpful these days, so to expect that. At this point, I can't take on the responsibility for explaining things to them, and while I wish I could help them, they still need to admit that they need help understanding what's going on in my life. I don't see that genuinely happening any time soon.
I just need to get on with my life, and ignore all judgement but my own.
It would help, though, if someone got me a bigger plate.